Is this the age of specialization or what? I mean just days ago we heard about the TwitterPeek and now there is this dedicated device for reading Wikipedia content called as the WikiReader. It is a 3.9 x 3.9 x 0.8 inches device with a touch screen monochrome  LCD screen and three buttons placed right under it. There’s 32 MB of storage on board, besides 64 for firmware and expansion option up to 8 GB via the microSD. The gizmo weighs a mere 127 grams. Two AAA batteries power it and will keep it working for up to 12 months, at least theoretically. It has scratch resistant screen as well as a high quality plastic casing.

Updates can be received by mail on a new microSD card twice a year costing $29, plus taxes and shipping off course. Yes and the device is being shipped worldwide, thanks to Amazon. In the extreme case one might as well download updates to his/her PC and then save them on the microSD card for use in the Reader. The unit is priced at $99.

The big question? Why do we need to buy this thing? Why not access Wikipedia over the Internet using same old PC or even a Smartphone/mobile phone? Portability? nope, this might be useful for kids then. This is a little confusing! And if that be the case then when are we going to have a FaceBook specific device?

TwitterPeek is what it is called, a dedicated device for tweeting only, no E-mails, voice mails or calls just simple plain tweeting. Available in two colors i.e. Black and Aqua it has a full QWERTY keyboard for typing in the tweets.

After purchasing the device simply initialize it with your Twitter account settings and you are ready to go. The device lets users tweet, reply, retweet, send messages directly and download followers. A single account is supported at one time.

TwitPics can also be viewed by clicking the view content option from the TwitterPeek menu. Various payment plans have been floated, if you pay $99 you get six months tweeting along with the device. For $ 199 the device comes with lifetime service (Related to life of the device). Basically it will use the mobile phone networks for sending/receiving the tweets.

Why would people want to buy an additional device when Tweeting is a possibility with the days smart phones is anybody’s guess. This might be exclusively for the Tweetaholics, that’s as far as I can guess. The battery is known to last from 3 to 4 days on average usage. More info is available at Peek, and the Peek can be bought from the ever present Amazon.

It will now be possible to have URLs and Internet addresses in Non-Latin script. This means now it will be possible to have domains in Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew or other languages. This was heavily voted by the board of ICANN at Seoul just recently.

Out of the 1.6 billion netizens half are those who speak languages that do not use Latin scripts. It is these 800 million that will benefit form this move. The change could come as early as next year and is being considered as a big one. For the past 40 years or so the same old system has been in place and this is a good development in this sphere.

On the technical front some major changes would be required in the DNS so that it is able to recognize these non-Latin characters and scripts. Once that is done, the rest will be easy.

This has to be something new and different, just imagine a whole concert live on YouTube! What prompted a rock band like U2 to make such a decision is not known but it certainly is welcome and history in the making both for the band and for YouTube. Manager Paul McGuinness in a statement said , “The band has wanted to do something like this for a long time”. Well Paul this is certainly good news for the millions of fans out there and it is coming this weekend. So make you PCs, Notebooks, Net books and whatever that you have ready for the fun to begin.

He further said, “it’s the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium. Fans often travel long distances to come to see U2 — this time U2 can go to them, globally!” YouTube will stream the concert live across five continents and besides this replays will be available at the U2 website as well as YouTube. The Sunday’s show is scheduled to be held at Rose Bowl California with an expected audience of about a hundred thousand fans. Well if YouTube is thrilled so are we.

NetBooks are available in plenty nowadays, the only problem with these tiny devices is that they all come with Intel Atom processors which are meant for just the menial tasks like word processing, surfing the web or watching movies. All the  other compliments are there minus the much needed processing power, well guess that is what NetBooks are meant for.

Acer however, has spruced up their newer NetBook model AS1410 with better hardware and surprisingly the machine  carries a somewhat smaller price tag. The screen is a cool 11.6 “, a Celeron SU2300 processor does the processing, there is 2 GB of DDR2 RAM, 160 GB HDD, 3 USB 2.0  ports, 6 cell Li Ion batter, 5 in 1 card reader, HDMI port, Intel GMA 4500HD graphics card and Windows 7 Premium (64 bit).

The machine will be available before holiday season starting at a crisp $400. Make a wish now!

The race to make and release the ultimate eReader is on and spring Design has unveiled plans to market one by the year’s end. This device will run the world’s most anticipated OS, you guessed it right the Android. It has two screens a 6” Electronic Paper Display (EPD) and a 3.5” LCD. The device will have Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity for downloading those megabytes of books out there. Users will be able to make use of both screens at one time, browse the web via the LCD and read later on the EPD.

Memory extension takes place via an SD card, a headphone and a speaker is also provided. Besides all this it has a browser having bookmarking, security and history features and smart phone capabilities. So is this a tablet with smart phone features built in to it? What could be more awesome than this?

Details regarding partner operators are not known as yet, but with EVDO and HSPA the choice will be wide and not restricted to a select few. However, Spring Design has hinted on shipping devices to a select few strategic partners, now who might that be?

The Wi-Fi alliance has announced that Wi-Fi Direct specifications are in final stages. This will facilitate Wi-Fi enabled devices to establish peer to peer connections somewhat like the Bluetooth. So Wi-Fi Direct will make it possible for you to make you Laptop talk to your printer, headphone, speakers, keyboard and everything else. What then will happen to the Bluetooth? well it will continue to work like a Bluetooth off course.

The good news is that new devices made according to this standard will be backward compatible with the legacy Wi-Fi devices made according to the old standard. As Wi-Fi enters in to the p2p arena the demand for routers may well decrease since the newer standard will obviate the requirement of any such device. And since this technology will be embedded in to camera, mobile phone and almost everything so this will give us more reasons to shift to IPv6.

We have heard about Nokia plunging in to the NetBook field, that was certainly a news maker, now it is Dell that plans to launch a mobile phone somewhere in 2010. This isn’t one bit surprising because we were always wondering why hadn’t Dell done this before? And now Michael Dell has unveiled plans to launch a smart phone for the US market. The announcement was made at the FiReGlobal a few days back by the CEO himself who went on to talk about the importance of a mobile device for the company’s ever bright future.

Much details aren’t known about the device, the specs and whether it will be Android based or will run on  Windows Mobile 7. Dell has a sizeable share in the PC market and a mobile device will not only augment its share but have a good impact on the overall business also. It has been made public that China Mobile will launch the device and rumors about AT&T might well be unfounded. Surprisingly the last Dell Mini 3i was also launched in China for China Mobile this time now they are setting the US market in the crosshairs.

The mad race is on, the smallest, the fastest, the cutest and now we have the lightest in weight off course the Sony Vaio X series of laptops which weighs a mere 1.6 pounds. The laptop comes with pre-installed with Windows 7 Premium, including some goodies like the Works SE 9.0, AOL, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (wait a minute what happened to the ads driven MS office we were promised? old is gold hmm!) and Norton Internet Security. These by the way are trial versions.

The screen size is a respectable 11.1 inches and there is cam and mic for the much needed face to face video conferencing. Oh and by the way the screen is scratch resistant, the body made of Caron fiber and at full charge the battery lasts for around 3.5 hours. An additional battery can be thrown in at the cost of increased weight off course which pushes the running time to 14.5 hours (if you can sit and work that long!). This additional battery also works as the tilt rest for the machine, ingenious indeed.

The innards comprise of an Intel Atom Z550 processor clocking at 2 GHz, a solid state drive up to 128 GB, 2 GB SD RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi (802.11 b/g/n), Stereo Bluetooth and Intel High Definition audio. The 11” screen size is a new entry as we have laptops mostly in the 12” categories and NetBooks in 10”. The price a mere $1300. Who said shedding weight was easy or even cheap?

The inevitable has happened and Microsoft has decided to install a Starter Edition of Office 2010 on new PCs which will run adverts thus making it free. Included in the package will be MS Starter Word and Excel only. The move comes with a view to lure in customers and drive them away from old legacy applications like MS Works.

The Starter Edition will in fact be a limited version and users will be able to upgrade to the full version from within the MS Office 2010 environment. The full version procedures are also being finalized and users will have to buy Key Cards in order to activate their versions of MS Office. Since PCs will come preloaded with the software package there will be no CD/DVDs shipped to them, users will only have to enter their Key Cards to unlock.

New Office off course means newer features, but as far as I can see people seem reluctant to switch over to new versions just for the heck of it. I mean if your Office suite has all the features you need then why upgrade to something new unless absolutely necessary. By the way no date for the release has been announced as yet. For those who want to have a go at the new suite without buying a new PC will have to do it online from Office.com.